


Haunting

by nesrynfaliq



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Moriel - Freeform, Nightmares, UST, acomaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-13 02:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7958074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesrynfaliq/pseuds/nesrynfaliq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in the midst of ACOMAF. Azriel is still desperately trying to infiltrate the queens’ mortal court. His absence takes its toll on Mor who finds her old nightmares returning to her. In a bid to escape them she leaves Velaris and heads to a quiet spot outside the city to gather herself. Unknown to her, Azriel has the same idea. </p>
<p>While none of the lovers she had taken over the years had ever been allowed to feel like home, Azriel was home.</p>
<p>He was safety and warmth and comfort; the one who could always calm her even when she woke in near hysterics. He had always seen himself as a broken bastard, barely worthy of being included in their court, or of mattering to anyone. Nothing. But ever since he had come for her in the Autumn Court all those years ago and scooped her out of the snow and into his arms, she had struggled to see him as anything less than everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunting

 

Mor closes her eyes and slowly tips her head back, exposing her throat to the moon’s blinding white bite. The darkness embraces her like a lover, clinging close, pressing into her skin, coating every curve. But its touch is soothing, comforting, familiar and worn. Unlike any of the lovers she’s taken over the centuries. They had been a soothing comfort for a few nights, weeks, perhaps months. But were always gone, always pushed away, before they felt truly known and familiar the way this darkness does.

She never wanted that, never wanted to get that close to someone, never dared let anyone who shared her bed feel like home. It felt too much like relying on them. And she had decided centuries ago never to bind herself to anyone like that, never to make herself feel owned, even in the slightest of ways, again.

Her freedom means more to her than familiarity or stability. And that’s what she reminds herself of now, drowning in the memories of what was done years ago. They’re things she hasn’t dwelled on this way in decades but they’ve plagued her dreams these past few nights. She is free now.  A marionette who cut her own tangled strings and made her masters bow before her. She is the queen  over the men who once tried to sell her like chattel. She is the conqueror of her nightmares. She is the dreamer released into a new world that smells like hope.

Propping her chin on her knees where they’re tucked in tight against her chest, Mor glances out over her surroundings. She had winnowed here tonight after waking alone and screaming in her room. As the memories continued to stir within her the walls around her had quickly come to feel like the bars of a cage and she’d needed to get out.

This was one of her places in the Night Court. Too far from any of the main cities for any who couldn’t winnow or fly. It is quiet and secluded, untouched and undisturbed for all the centuries she’s been coming to it. The bank is covered in thick, lush grass that looks black in the darkness of the night but by day glows, a stark emerald blanket covering the world.  

The soft carpet of darkness fades smoothly onto the stark, onyx mirror before her. A deep, fathomless glassy lake, still and untouched by the gentle fingers of wind that run through her hair. The sight of it sends thrills dancing along her spine at the same time as it soothes her. Magic lives and breathes in this place, to make the surface of that lake so still. So still that it forms a perfect mirror and the stars that shine overhead glitter in it.

 It’s as though some god captured the essence of night when the world was forming and placed it here. It’s entrancing and safe, welcome for a daughter of night, who spent all her life hiding her dreams from the harsh, calculating eyes of day, only ever daring to whisper them to herself when no-one but the stars looked on. The stars could be trusted with dreams, she had been told as a little girl. It was a habit she had never quite managed to outgrow.

Azriel had been the one who had first brought her to this place; his place, he confessed to her. A place he would come to train undisturbed. A refuge when the horrors of his own past became too much. Somewhere he could go when he just wanted a quiet, calm place to sit and think in peace for a few hours.

 Some nights when she has nightmares and feels the power pulsing beneath her skin as that broken, battered girl she was that still shelters in her heart fights to tear free of it she swallows her demons and makes them dance with her. She pulls a dress from her closet and loses herself in Rita’s for however long it takes her to become part of the music and the rhythm and the atmosphere that always thrums through her favourite dance hall and escape her past.

But some nights, like tonight, the thought of the people pressing in around her and the pounding beat of the music ensnaring her heart and causing it to pulse in time makes her feel sick and claustrophobic. Those are the nights she wakes and feels like she’s been stuffed into a cage that gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller with each second she lets it.

On those nights she comes here.

Az would usually have heard and come to her at the first sound of her screams, staying with her or leaving her alone as she needed. But he wasn’t there. He was still in the mortal realm, trying to infiltrate the queens’ castle. He’s been gone for almost a week now, without a flicker of word on his progress or well-being. She knew that was the way he worked, how focused he became-and how poorly he took care of himself as a result. And she knew that he had been gone for longer, to more dangerous places but...But she still worried about him. And missed him.

While none of the lovers she had taken over the years had ever been allowed to feel like home, Azriel was home.

He was safety and warmth and comfort; the one who could always calm her even when she woke in near hysterics. He had always seen himself as a broken bastard, barely worthy of being included in their court, or of mattering to anyone. Nothing. But ever since he had come for her in the Autumn Court all those years ago and scooped her out of the snow and into his arms, she had struggled to see him as anything less than everything.

Taking several deep breathes she tries to let her anxiety over Az dissipate. The Illyrian spymaster can look after himself. She knows that better than anyone, having been his battle partner in years gone by. And he’ll be back soon and safe she assures herself.

Opening her eyes again she studies the surface of the lake once more. It looks so beautiful, like one of Feyre’s paintings brought to life, all colours and textures and beckoning warmth. A fleeting thought flickers into her head, like a breath of wind whispering against her side. And in that moment she wants nothing more than to slide into that endless expanse of stars and have them spattered across her skin, to sink into them and let them swallow her whole.

Standing abruptly, as though acting on orders, Mor unfastens her cloak and lets it fall, pooling at her feet. Her dress quickly follows suit, her shoes, her undergarments too, until she stands before the world bare as the day she was born. Gracefully, with slender, feline steps she walks to the edge of the water and steps into the lake, moving in deeper and deeper with each stride.

The water, though not unbearably cold, still stings her skin as she lets it envelope her. Though she moves through it, only her body disturbs the water, the rest of it remains as flat and smooth as the sky that’s spread out above her. Mor trails her fingers experimentally through it. The moment her fingers pass a spot it returns to its precious, glass-like state. A soft smile tugs at her lips.

Then she takes a deep breath, filling her lungs, and plunges beneath the surface of the water, letting it cover her completely. There’s such peace here. It's intensified by the knowledge that if someone were to somehow stumble upon this unknown spot only the small pile of clothes by the bank would betray her presence. The lake itself would give away nothing. It will guard the secret of her visit, it will guard her in its smooth embrace.

She comes up again only when her chest burns and her system cries out in desperation for air. She breaks the surface of the water in a sudden burst of water droplets that catch the stars light and glow like an explosion of shattered diamond. For a long while she treads water, chasing the unreachable reflection of the moon in front of her, feeling like the day- bound to forever chase the night with no hope of ever catching or claiming it.

She feels similarly impossible. The invincible prey who grew claws and power and will never be hunted again. She feels eternal. The shattered girl she still harbours deep within her has grown strong and with the interminable vista of immortality spread out before she will only become more so. She feels light and warm and safe, the painful broken memories of her nightmare thrown off like shackles. She feels good. She feels strong. She feels free.

****

Azriel lands in the usual rapid flurry of air tossed up by his wings flaring to slow his descent. The moment he hits the ground he sinks to his knees by the bank of the lake in the same fluid motion. His body trembles with the exertion of the past few days and his wings sag and droop behind him, stiff and sore from the flying he’s done.

He had needed to stop here, had needed to rest. He had known that not even he could push himself on to Velaris without stopping without doing serious, perhaps irreparable, damage to himself. And he’d needed a moment to think, to breathe, to find some shred of peace in the world – if there was any left at all.

Taking a deep breath he dips his battered, blood stained hands into the lake and begins to scrub the gore from them. He sluices the cool water over his hands, trying not to compare the way the stars spattered across the surface of the lake look so like the blood sprayed across his skin – constellations of violence written in living ink covering his forearms.

The scarlet liquid eventually releases its hold on his skin but not on his soul. It remains branded  there, awful, eternal. Azriel closes his eyes and forces himself to take slow, steadying breaths as the memories of what had happened, what he’d done, threaten to take over. He’s never had any illusions about his role in this court, about what he is for this family of his, what he does for them.

He is the dagger in the darkness, the slow death in the black of night, the monster in the shadows. And he does it willing, for his family, for the people they’ve dedicated themselves to. He understands that even within the Court of Dreams one of them has to become a nightmare in order to make this new world. Cassian builds by thrusting his hands deep into the earth. Rhys whispers to the stars. Amren reshapes the very bones of it. And Mor, Mor coaxes the sun to rise in response to her bright, daring laughter.

Azriel’s shadows curl around his chest and spiral up towards his ear, whispering, always whispering- a song from another world, a dark, opaque, ethereal one. Lifting his head he opens his eyes and feels his heart slam to an abrupt halt in his chest. 

There she is. 

Silhouetted against the stars. The moon gilds her soft skin in molten silver. Her golden hair seems to glow in the reflected light tumbles unbound around her in waves.

Morrigan. His Morrigan.

She has her back to him, her chin tilted slightly to look up at the vast heavens spread out above them. His eyes dart towards the small pile of clothes on the bank and then return to her, utterly naked in front of him.

The water stills around her waist, holding her, while the rest of her body is exposed to the chill bite of the night air. Even with only the half-light of the moon and stars to guide him he can see the scars in her back from the nails that were driven through her. Centuries on the cruelty of her family still makes marks upon her body. But not on her soul. Not anymore. She banished the dark stain of the Court of Nightmares years ago with the light borne of her own dreams.

As though feeling his gaze on her, she turns to look over a shoulder at him, her long curtain of hair shifting with her. At the sight of him her lips brush into a soft smile, her eyes crinkling in at the corners. It fades as she gives her head a slight jerk, beckoning him towards her. She turns away again, tilting her face up to the sky once more. Her head is full of light but her body is bowed with the weight of the demons she still carries on her back.

That’s all he needs to see. That struggle is all he needs to sense to understand the reason she came here. It's more than enough to encourage Azriel to obey her. Slowly, he peels off his clothes, leaving them in a neat pile on the bank near hers. His weapons and empty siphons clatter to the ground leaving him in nothing but skin and blood stains and scars.

Wings tucked in tight against his body he steps into the cool lake, letting it embrace and envelope him. The soft sand beneath his feet feels like a blanket. I'ts smooth as velvet and he pads along it until he reaches Morrigan. When he does she turns to him and her rich, warm eyes find his almost at once.

She takes a step closer, dangerously close, to him, to that line they’ve dared to dance along but never to cross for five centuries. His heart stutters when she reaches out and cups his cheek in her hand. Her thumb brushes the faint streak of dried blood on his skin until it crumbles to scarlet powder. 

“Are you hurt?” she demands, voice a hoarse, taut rasp. Her eyes snap back to his, holding them, pinning him, daring him to lie to her.

Azriel shakes his head. “No,” he murmurs, his voice low and soothing.

Her eyes tear from his face, scanning his body, taking in the tattoos, the many scars that pepper his skin and his wings, searching for anything new, anything she doesn’t recognise. She looks up at him again, “Are you all right?” asks says, rephrasing the question and causing a slight crease to appear between his brows.

Without thinking he reaches out and places a hand on her bare shoulder. The touch sends lightning sparking through his nerves and it’s difficult to suppress his shudder. Then he gently drags his fingertips down her arm, settling her, connecting them. Her hardened expression seems to soften but the tension that remains in her body allows him to sense her continuing worry.

“Yes,” he breathes, keeping his answers short and simple, his gaze locked firmly on hers the entire time.

“You’re sure?” she challenges, her usually light, merry voice now brittle and shaking. He nods again, giving her arm a gentle squeeze as he does so. Her jaw tightens, “The blood-“

“It’s not mine,” he interrupts her, lowering his eyes at the confession, unable to bear holding that gaze when he speaks of those things.

 She knows what he does, what he is, she’s known for years. But he can never bring himself to look at her on the rare occasions that they acknowledge it. He doesn’t know what he would find in her eyes but he can’t stand any of it.

“I know,” she says quietly.

And in spite of himself he raises his head and meets her eyes again. Blazing and hard with some of that steel in them. Others always seem to forget that about her. When they meet her they see a woman with sunshine trapped in her hair and lips made for laughter; her heart displayed proudly and defiantly upon her skin. Few ever bother to try and see beneath that, as much a mask as any. Her bones are made of iron and her blood boils with the thrum of power and heat from the fire that roars in the soul of her.

There’s a darkness in her. One that’s buried deep within her and rarely unleashed. But when it is he’s known armies to fall before her and mountains to tremble at her approach. Their Morrigan is a survivor, a dreamer, a bright, merry soul. But she’s also the Third in command of the largest court in Prythian and a war veteran and legend in her own right.

A fragment of that darkness lingers in her eyes when she looks up at him, speaking to his. There’s always been that connector between them, that black bond. There’s a ruthlessness in her that her surface smile never gives away. But he sees it in her when she looks at her father. The part she plays in the Court of Nightmares is less a mask and more her ripping open her skin to reveal the raw power that lurks beneath in her core.

Her hand lifts, trailing beads of moisture from the lake around them and cups his cheek again. “That’s why I asked if you were all right.”

He blinks then gently covers her hand, smooth and soft, with his own rough, scarred one. “I always am,” he murmurs softly back to her.

Pulling back slightly she peers up into his eyes, stroking his face with her fingertips. A sad smile tugs at her lips as she exhales, the tension flooding from her more in defeat than relief. Leaning in she presses her brow to his then surprises him by sliding her arms around his waist and pressing herself in close against him, skin to skin. The motion is intimate and intense but gentle and affectionate as well as she pillows her head against his chest, her eyes closed.

Azriel freezes, staring down at her, too startled by the embrace to immediately respond to it. With an impatient little huff, Mor loops her fingers around his wrists and gently tugs his hands around her, coaxing him into returning the gesture.

“Mor-“ he begins, his voice taut and thick.

She stills against him but doesn’t drop his hands or pull away as she interrupts him. The words come out muffled as her face is still buried in against his chest, “Hold me, Az.” He blinks down at her in shock but she doesn’t meet his questioning hazel eyes. She only pulls him closer and mumbles, voice catching, “Please, just hold me.”  

*****

The feel of his arms slipping gently around her body is all Mor needs to feel home. Exhaling she nestles in against him, her eyes closed. She can breathe. She can breathe. For the first time since that nightmare her chest unlocks from where it had seized up in the aftermath of the vision. No amount of time or quiet bathing in this lake could have done what Az did in less than a minute just by putting his arms around her like this.

She lets her head rest gently against his chest and breathes him in. His scent is strong in her lungs, leather and vanilla mingling together. It’s a scent she’s known for centuries now and it’s always soothing. It might be the last thing some wretched creatures ever know in this world. It might be the signal of oncoming pain and destruction for their enemies – something she knows he’s all too aware of. But for her it’s safety. It’s the scent that wraps around her when he comes back from a mission and her family is together again. It's the thing that grounds her most when she has a nightmare and he’s there, solidly, dependably there, helping pull her out of it. It is home. 

Shifting slightly she nestles in closer, listening to his heart beating steadily within the cage of his ribs. She can’t stop the shudder that runs through her at the sound of it; at the feel of it. His warmth seeps into her and that’s reassuring too. She hadn’t realised just how much she’d needed this; how much she’d needed him in this moment until he’d been here. When she’d seen him on that bank her heart had slammed to a stop in her chest and it had taken every lick of her self control to remain standing meekly in the centre of that lake, merely extending an invitation and hoping he would come to her. And he had, thank the Mother he had.

“You’re shaking.” Az’s deep voice, soft and gentle, vibrates through her due to their proximity.

“I missed you,” she murmurs back, not moving an inch from where she holds him, the water lapping around them. The heat of his bare skin against hers is slowly undoing her. The rhythm of his breathing is infinitely soothing. The blood that still stains some of his skin reminds her what he went through, what might have happened. 

She knows that he struggles with it. He'd never let them see, never tell his brothers what some of his darker missions do to him but she knows. She knows that he pretends to be cold and distant and uncaring. But she also knows the things he does cause him to wake sweating and screaming at night. 

And she will never shy from it. She will never turn away from him no matter what he's done; no matter how vile it may be. She will never condemn him for the things he's had to do for them; for his own survival. Because the alternative is always worse; always impossible to bear. The alternative is losing him; losing everything. 

“Mor-“ He begins quietly. No doubt sensing the tension that had begun bunching and knotting in his shoulders he begins to gently work them with his scarred hands, rough and present and more soothing than he will ever know.

The words burst from her before she can stop them. Words she never meant to say, never wanted to say, words she wanted to keep hidden from them all. But with him...With him they pour out of her before she can't stop them. And she wonders as they spill out if maybe she needed to say them; needed him especially, to hear them after all.

“There’s a war coming, Azriel,” she breathes, still not raising her head from his chest. “It’s going to come, whatever we do, I can feel it. And you’re already in the thick of it, in danger.”

“This isn’t the first time – not for any of us,” he says, his voice is gentle, his hands still gently rubbing her back trying to soothe her. But his words are firm and perhaps a little confused as though he can’t understand what’s wrong. She can almost hear him wondering what makes this so different than all the other times he’s put himself in danger over the centuries.

He’s always been the first to do that; to offer to put himself in harm’s way. A part of it is that he can’t bear anyone else to be hurt merely to spare him. But she knows there’s another part of him, a deeper part of him, that feels if one of them has to be in danger, if one of them has to die, he’s the least valuable and therefore the best one of them to do it. In all the centuries she’s known him she’s never been able to overcome that, never been able to talk him out of thinking that way.

“I know,” she gets out, swallowing hard and still refusing to remove her head from where it rests against his chest.

 She just wants to feel the warmth of his skin, hear the pounding of his heart. And she doesn’t want to see that agonizing bemusement in his eyes – wondering why she would ask, why she would care.

She can’t stop herself from trembling, can’t stop the way she grips onto him so tightly it’s as though she wants to join their bodies together and never let him leave her side again. She can’t stop the thick emotion that clogs her throat as she struggles to say, “I just...I can’t stand the thought of losing you, Azriel.”

She doesn’t know why she says it. Perhaps it was the thought that he probably has no idea, no idea how deep that terror goes, no idea what it would do to her if he never came home. And she needs him to. Her gut twists painfully at the very thought, at the very idea of him not being in her life. The last time, with the war, she had only known him, only had him in her life for a decade or so. In that time he had saved her life but what she felt for him then- curiosity and fondness and some measure of affection for the kindness he’d shown her- was nothing compared to what she felt now.

Now he’s family – her true family. He’s one of the pillars that her life, her entire world, is built upon and if she lost that...He has no idea, she knows, no idea what it would do to her, if he died. It would take her back to a place she hasn’t truly been in centuries. And it wouldn’t have to force her, it wouldn’t have to drag her, she would go there willingly. She would walk calmly back through the gates of hell for him.

 Because she would want that, that darkness, the power it unlocked for him. For him she would unleash it upon this world until it knew of her grief, knew of her rage, her pain. Until it knew the fact that it had taken something precious from her that she could never get back in its very bones and it understood her vengeance. She would hunt down the bastards that had done that to him, that had torn him away from her and then...And then...Then she might break, might truly shatter in a way she hadn’t done in more than five hundred years. She might-

“Morrigan.” Azriel’s soft voice interrupts her wild, tumultuous thoughts.

It’s only then she realises that she’s gripping him so tightly that her nails are digging into him in a way that must hurt. But his voice wasn’t warning or cautionary, he hadn’t been asking her to stop for his sake. No. There was only tender concern in there, of a kind few ever saw.

A moment later his scarred hands slide beneath her chin and tilt her head up to look at him. His rich hazel eyes are soft and warm – something she knows so few are ever privileged to see. There is a warmth to her shadowsinger. Buried deep beneath walls and masks that he uses to protect himself; and those around him there is soft feeling and compassion. Everything he does he does for them, for their court, she knows that. She knows what he would push himself to, what he would put himself through for them. 

His tanned skin is still spattered with blood, blood that looks black in the darkness around them. It’s never bothered her. When he’s come back home and she’s found shadows lingering in his eyes as well as on his skin she’s the one who talks to him about it. She is the one who pushes and tries and coaxes until she gets something out of him. It bothers him – more deeply than she thinks he’s let even her know – the things that he does.

They don’t bother her. They never have. It’s not something she will ever run from. She understands the kinds of monsters that can live inside the hearts of the creatures in these lands. She has seen first hand the kinds of monsters that a pleasant, well born High Fae face can hide. The callused, scarred hands that hold her now, so gently, so carefully, are spattered in blood and capable of causing so much pain to those he unleashes himself upon. But not her. Her they heal and soothe and cradle. Her they comfort. For her they form home.

His voice is exceedingly soft when he rumbles softly, “You had nightmares?”

A shiver trembles down her spine at that. Blood and screaming fill her head as though she’s there again, all those centuries ago. Her father had been furious, so furious with her for the loss of her virginity – the only part of her he had ever truly valued. The things he had done...The brands, the knives, the nails. She still bears the scars from them.

But this had been worse. So much worse. The nightmare that had become familiar to her over the centuries had been when she again was held down, when she again was tortured and punished for having dared to defy him and shame him that way. And she despised them. They made her sick to her stomach, made her want to enter the Court of Nightmares and loose her power on them until they regretted that – what they’d done to her; what they’d done to every female who had ever displeased them but this...

This time she had not been the one chained to the stone table in the bowels of that black court. It had been Azriel. Her Azriel. His wings had been pinned by long, deep ash spikes driven right through the middle, still weeping crimson tears – even as she sobbed in the corner. Restrained, held back, forced to watch as her father hurt Azriel. Everything that had been done to her all those years ago she had to watch done to him. And she could do nothing. Nothing as her father went further than he had with her. He had destroyed Azriel piece by piece. He had ripped him apart until there was nothing left, until he was dead, until he was gone forever and there was no way she could get him back.

When she had awoken screaming from that nightmare it had taken more than an hour for her to stop being violently sick. Images and memories of it had kept flooding into her again and again. The scent of his blood; the sight of it spattered all over the floor. The sound of his screams, her own helplessness, the way she had just watched it all happen and done nothing. The emptiness in those beautiful hazel eyes as she had watched the life drain out of them...

She had expected him to come to her, had prayed that he would come to her. His rough but gentle hands would softly sweep back her hair and he would rub her back and murmur to her. His scent would entwine around her and that sense of calm would slowly fill her and sweep away the remnants of the nightmare.

When he had not come to her, when she had remained alone on the freezing stone floor of her washroom she had panicked. Fearing that somehow the dream had been made real, that it had been a prophecy of some sort. She feared he had been caught at the queens’ palace and they had done that to him and that Rhys would arrive any moment and tell her he was gone, that he would never again hold her.

 It had been then that she had left and come to the lake in the hopes that it would remind her how to breathe. It had. But it had also been unable to completely banish the terror that flared in her at the thought of losing Azriel like that.

Realising that she’s frozen again she nods, mouth dry, in answer to Azriel’s question about her nightmares. “I dreamed that you were dead,” she manages to rasp to him. He doesn’t need details – doesn’t need her to tell them either. She can see in his eyes that he understands precisely what she witnessed without her having to try and explain it to him.

His body relaxes a little and he allows it to follow the shape of hers, melding them gently together, absorbing her in against him. Her eyes close and she presses in close to him, letting herself exhale and collapse in against him.

All she wants is for him to hold her for a little while. She doesn’t want to talk, she doesn’t want to hear empty words and hollow promises – and he refuses to make any to her. He knows that’s not what she needs, not what she wants. And she knows it’s not something he wants to give her. He will never tell her it will be all right when he doesn’t know if it will. They’re at war and they could be torn apart in a stuttering heartbeat. He won’t pretend that everything will be fine. 

He can only hold her now, the way she needs him to. One hand rubs gently up and down her back, the other softly strokes at her hair. And he just holds her.

 They stand together in that lake, bathed in gentle moonlight and do nothing but hold each other, soothing their demons, quieting the raging of the storms in their souls and being there for one another. As they have been all these centuries; as she prays they will be for the rest of their eternities.

****

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading as ever! I love writing this pairing so much, I hope you enjoyed this piece.


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